mica – music austria has started the forerunner project on local level and will develop the existing networks.
In today’s globalized and digitalised world, music could find a global audience and could produce revenues for its creators independent from set distribution channels and the commercial music business. The “Fair Music Campaign” wants to bridge the gap and offer a trusted label for both – artists and audiences – to match their needs: musical diversity, recognition and remuneration.
New technological developments have resulted in far reaching structural changes in the music sector, leading to opening up of new distribution channels and possibilities. This change also impacts on cultural outputs or products. The effects of technological improvements bring challenges: dealing with piracy, directing the payment-flow towards the creators and deliberations on who decides about the access for producers and consumers to music and culture.
People will pay for music they love knowing that its creators will get a fair share for their work.
The Fair Music Campaign will raise awareness and will position “Fair Music” as the global brand for musical diversity.
The project is aimed to create a new awareness for rewarding creativity and give Non-Western countries a chance to break through on the music market… This ensures diversification of musical repertoire and strengthens regional content production, which is important for new EU member states.
“Fair Music” is dealing with the difficulties and problems of European music creators.
The main activities during the project period are :
- Develop a set of legal standards for cultural productions
- Develop the certification, infrastructure and business model = Set-up of a certification agency
- To install a sustainable innovative distribution scheme and remuneration model
- To install a catalogue of certified fair music repertoire that takes into account the socio-economic content of cultural production.
- Establish an active network of partners (organisations and individuals) from all over the world.
“Our bands wanted their songs to be on peer-to-peer-networks, although they are not Madonna or any other famous artist”, is the straightforward answer CEO gives when asked what his music service jamendo is about. jamendo, a French company that is based in Luxembourg, is a new model for artists to promote, publish, and be paid for their music. (more…)
Posted by Fairmusic Team on March 12th, 2008 under background, culture
On Friday at the World Forum on Music in Beijing, artists, producers, law experts, representatives of intellectual property organisations, researchers and activists have discussed the present and the future of intellectual property rights (IPRs). The session, dedicated to this topic was chaired by Peter Rantasa, member of the exceutive board of the International Music Council (IMC), which held the Forum, and initiator of fair music.
Within the perspective of the IMCs five musical rights (in short: freedom of expression, freedom to learn, right to access, right to develop artistry and communicate, right to obtain just recognition and remuneration) the panel explored the needs for and obstacles to creating an effective IPR-regime in countries which do not have one; the situation for collective ownership and traditional music; alternatives to conventional IPR-regimes; the international quest between copyright and authors rights; collective rights management; the cutting edge issues for IPR in the digital realm and empiric data on the financial outcomes of IPR-regimes and their effects on creativity.
Mulonga.net is a platform for a very special kind of sustaining and furthering cultural diversity and cultural exchange between the area of the Tonga people of Zimbabwe and across the Zambezi River in Zambia, Austria and the world.
The Tonga.Online Project, that has been launched in 2001, has focused attention on promoting a Tonga voice over the Internet. The aim is to provide the Tonga with access to the most advanced communication tools, so that they may represent themselves to the outside world and reflect upon the social, political and economic environment in which they live.
“Although, in recent years, attention for the necessity of intellectual property rights has grown enormously against the backdrop of globalisation and digitisation, until now no consensus has been found in the music sector,” Peter Rantasa, chairman of the panel discussion “Intellectual Property Rights” at the 2nd World Forum on Music in Beijing that will be held Friday, director of mica - music austria, and founder of the initiative fair music, states.
Rantasa says, it is no coincidence that the topics of globalisation and digitisation appear simultaneously and he also gives the reasons for the current situation: “Rich countries, artists and industries logically defend their positions. Openness for a new and innovative approach which meets the requirements of a model orientated towards a balance of interests is to be found among those who have been refused access to global markets.”
Mp3 is just a technology, a method to compress audio. But for some it is devil’s advocate because it actually made the quick and easy sharing of music over the internet possible. But one could as well “think of an mp3 as metadata about the artist”, was Joi Ito, chairman of the board of Creative Commons and member of the board of ICANN, considering at the fair music discussion in Linz in September.
“The internet is about creating relationships between the artist and the user. The problem with labels is: this brand is standing between you and the artist. We know from experience that people actually pay more if it’s going directly to the artist.”, says Ito. For artists it is therefore necessary to experiment and one possibility to find new ways of dealing with their own intellectual property is the alternative licensing scheme Creative Commons. Ito: “We think it is important to let the artist decide under which circumstances they want to give away their work and when they want to be paid.”
